The auxiliary buildings include a chapel of white marble, dormitories, offices and laundries. A new refectory, containing improved ranges and steam cooking apparatus, has recently been added, the dining-hall of which will seat with ease more than one thousand persons. Two bathing-pools are in the western portion of the grounds, and others in basements of buildings. The houses are heated by steam and lighted by gas obtained from the city works. Thirty-five electric lights from seven towers one hundred and twenty-five feet high illuminate the grounds and the neighboring streets. A wall sixteen inches in thickness and ten feet in height, strengthened by spur piers on the inside and capped with marble coping, surrounds the whole estate, its length being six thousand eight hundred and forty-three feet, or somewhat more than one and one-quarter miles. It is pierced on the southern side, immediately facing the south front of the main building, for the chief entrance, this last being flanked by two octagonal white marble lodges, between which stretches an ornamental wrought-iron grille, with wrought-iron gates, the whole forming an approach in keeping with the large simplicity of the college itself. The site upon which the college is erected corresponds well with its splendor and importance. It is elevated considerably above the general level of the surrounding buildings and forms a conspicuous object, not only from the higher windows and roofs in every part of Philadelphia, but from the Delaware river many miles below the city and from eminences far out in the country. From the lofty marble roof the view is also exceedingly beautiful, embracing the city and its environs for many miles around and the course, to their confluence, eight miles below, of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. The history of the institution commences shortly after the decease of Girard, when the Councils of Philadelphia, acting as his trustees, elected a Board of Directors, which organized on the 18th of February, 1833, with Nicholas Biddle as chairman. A Building Committee was also appointed by the City Councils on the 21st of the following March, in whom was vested the immediate supervision of the construction of the college, an office in which they continued without intermission until the final completion of the structure.